The Schools We Need

by E.D. Hirsch.
Reviewed by Mike Eisenberg (March, 1999)

Although it takes strong, even combative views, E.D. Hirsch's
book The Schools We Need resists easy classification.
Hirsch's main argument is that education (at least early education)
is best characterized as the accumulation of "intellectual
capital"; that this capital is realized in a curriculum that
stresses the communication of culturally central facts and skills;
that this curriculum is an identifiable property of national
heritage and (at least to a first approximation) stable over time;
that it is most effectively structured as a coherent, fine-grained,
and closely monitored sequence of educational objectives; and that
the appropriate instructional methods for this curriculum include
extensive doses of whole-classroom instruction, with an emphasis on
order, discipline, and the introduction of material in small,
easily mastered chunks. Along the way, Hirsch finds many targets to
attack: proponents of "holistic learning", "lifelong learning",
"child-centered education", "individual learning styles", and
"higher-order learning skills", among others. In Hirsch's view, all
these are outgrowths of a basically failed Romantic intellectual
view, whose heritage can be traced back at least as far as
Rousseau's Emile.: the Romanticists' belief in the natural goodness
of human beings have led to an educational philosophy that ignores
its responsibility to improve the lives of children through the
occasionally tough love of outright instruction.

Is such a view "conservative" or "liberal"? In the current
confusion and anger of American political debate, it's hardly an
easy call. Hirsch shares at least two of the key rhetorical
assumptions of conservative argument: that American culture is in
widespread decline and that there is an imperilled national
consensus. (The progressives, despite their continued intellectual
failures, seem forever to be in the politicial ascendant.) Some
"conservatives" would applaud Hirsch's jabs at the many varieties
of progressive educational theory; they would be comfortable with
the notion of a quiet, orderly, easily managed, and readily
assessed elementary school classroom. The appeal here is to the
image of political order and stability transferred to the realm of
childhood. But Hirsch would argue that, on economic grounds, his
arguments should appeal to the "liberal" strain of thought that
sympathizes with the economically disadvantaged; he argues that the
poorest children are most harmed by the Romanticist classroom, and
would benefit most from an emphasis on intellectual capital. The
Hirschian classroom would arguably be a more egalitarian one, with
little or no emphasis on "elite" (and by implication "non-elite")
students. And what would America's religious right make of Hirsch's
stress on a common, cultural core of learning: might not they see a
threat in a collective, secular, nonsectarian nationwide
curriculum?

There is indeed a battle here, but it's not, as Hirsch well
understands, an easy matter of left-versus-right. It is a broader,
maybe vaguer matter than that-a battle of aesthetic points of view,
of images, tastes, of contrasting senses of the purpose of
education (or what Neil Postman calls "the end of education"). It
isn't just that Hirsch disagrees with his opponents over questions
of evidence, but that he and they see the process of education, and
maybe of life, through different lenses.

Hirsch's portrait of education is, at heart, one of skill and
knowledge acquisition. The child's role, in this picture, is to
garner the intellectual tools to cope with a competitive, perhaps
hostile world. Education-again on this view-is a matter of
preparation, of cautious preparedness; even the notion of
"intellectual capital" conjures up images of stockpiling resources.
To push this picture a little-but only a little-in the direction of
caricature: the world is a grim, demanding place, and children must
grow up to be ready to handle it. The primary result of a
successful education will be a readiness to cope, as reflected in
job security and financial success. Over and over, Hirsch uses the
language of "competencies", "knowledge", "skills" (though he
emphatically favors specific, well-defined skills, such as decoding
of words in early literacy, over fuzzier "metacognitive" skills);
such things are possessed, acquired, built upon.

There is certainly an internal coherence to this world view, and
some truth to it as well. Children need to grow into adults who can
acquire jobs, hold jobs, put food on the table and a roof over
their families' heads. And yes, the world is a grim place, at least
sometimes. But is it unfair to say that there is something nagging
about this vision as well-a kind of joylessness, perhaps? The
Hirschian child will most likely grow into a skilled, well-behaved,
knowledge-rich adult. There is no particular reason to expect that
he or she will develop a sense of intellectual passion, a personal
project or mission, a lifelong interest in anything in particular.
It seems eminently likely that, as a result of the Hirschian
education, the child will grow into an adult who accepts (but
barely tolerates) his or her job; at the end of the day, the
well-educated adult goes home to watch six hours of television, and
understands perfectly every common cultural reference. If the adult
has not repressed his or her classroom experience entirely, that
experience is remembered with a stern sense of accomplishment, a
rite of passage completed, a tough job well done.

Hirsch may claim that joy, playfulness, and a sense of mission
are natural side-effects of intellectual capitals, but these
concepts appear infrequently in his rhetoric. He criticizes his
opponents for selective attention to educational research (and for
favoring sloppy research methods), but he himself shows an
interesting partiality to classroom-wide, statistical research of a
kind that says little about the experience of individuals.
Biography, in this view, isn't data-or, as it isn't narrowly
construed scientific data, it must be unimportant. But there is an
odd discrepancy between Hirsch's views and the reminiscences of
creative adults; repeatedly, when creative individuals reflect upon
their own educations they recall activities, materials, settings,
and role models. (Books such as [John-Steiner], [Csikszentmihalyi],
[Mathematical People], and [Origins] are illustrative compendia of
such anecdotes.) It is rare to find such a person reminiscing about
the acquisition of particular facts, or bodies of facts; it is even
rarer to find such a person reminiscing about the positive effects
of their own classroom-wide instruction. Consider the astronomer
Margaret Geller's reflections:

My father is a crystallographer. Not only is he
interested in crystallography, but he is also interested in
design-the design of furniture and buildings.... He had an
attraction for any kind of toy that had anything to do with
geometry.... [T]here were toys where you could connect flat shapes
up with rubber bands to make solid figures. He bought me that, and
he'd explain to me the relationship between things that I built and
things in the world. For example, I'd make a cube, and he'd explain
to me the relationship between that and the structure of table
salt. And I'd make an icosahedron, and he'd explain how you see
that in the real world.... I would be able to visualize in 3-D. And
I realize now-I've talked to lots of people in science-that very
few people have that ability."

Or the mathematician Norbert Wiener's:

"I was brought up in a house of learning.... When I was
about seven years old, Father [invited] a chemical student... to
set up a little laboratory in the nursery and to show me some
simple experiments.... Once I had been sensitized to an interest in
the scientific-and various toys of scientific content played almost
as great a role in this as my reading-I became aware of stimulating
material all about me."

Or this account of Isaac Newton, as told by a contemporary:

"Every one that knew Sir Isaac [Newton], or have heard
of him, recount the pregnancy of his parts when a boy, his strange
inventions, and extraordinary inclination for mechanics. That
instead of playing among the other boys, when from school, he
always busied himself in making knick-knacks and models of wood in
many kinds. For which purposes he had got little saws, hatchets,
hammers, and a whole shop of tools, which he would use with great
dexterity. In particular they speak of his making a wooden
clock...."

Or this image of Stephen Hawking's youth, as recounted in a
recent biography:

"Stephen's [Hawking] room... was the magician's lair,
the mad professor's laboratory, and the messy teenager's study all
rolled into one. Among the general detritus and debris,
half-finished homework, mugs of undrunk tea, schoolbooks and bits
of model aircraft and bizarre gadgets lay in untended heaps. On the
sideboard stood electrical devices, the uses of which could only be
guessed at, and next to those a rack of test-tubes, their contents
neglected and discoloured among the general confusion of odd pieces
of wire, paper, glue, and metal from half-finished and forgotten
projects."

Stories of this type are legion; but what is the "intellectual
capitalist" to make of them? Undoubtedly, these creative
individuals learned the factual knowledge that Hirsch extols. But
there is a tension between the images purveyed by these stories,
and the images of the well-ordered classroom-wide sequential
instruction of Hirsch's vision. For these undoubtedly successful
adults, their factual knowledge is inextricably woven into their
intellectual lives and passions; and it is precisely passion that
is missing from the intellectual-capital view.

That Hirsch and his opponents are really talking in different
languages is starkly apparent in his response to the (admittedly
vague) slogan of "Teach the child, not the subject." Here is his
description of the idea, quoted in full from the critical guide to
educational terms that appears at the end of his book:

"Teach the child, not the subject." A phrase connoting
the principle behind "child-centered schooling" (which see). The
benign and reasonable interpretation of this famous battle cry of
progressivism is that one should attend to the moral, emotional,
and spiritual well-being of the child at the same time that one is
providing an excellent grounding in reading, writing, and
arithmetic. Only a hard-hearted person would dissent from this
goal. Historically, however, the progressive tradition has
continued to attack the disciplined teaching of reading, writing,
and arithmetic in favor of "holistic" methods, which supposedly
engage and educate the whole child. Progressivists have also
continued to disparage merely academic learning. Not surprisingly,
disparagement of "the subject" has resulted in a diminishment of
student competency in subject matters.

Hirsch's "benign and reasonable" interpretation shows an
interesting bias. Let's try another one: "One should provide an
excellent grounding in reading, writing, and arithmetic as a
necessary but relatively less-than-compelling part of a broader
education in which one energetically attends to the idiosyncratic,
intellectual well-being of the child."

Hirsch's view of acceptable data notwithstanding, biography is
interesting, and constitutes a body of lore that is itself part of
our cultural inheritance, and part of our collective common sense.
Education is primarily a matter of shaping personal biographies, of
helping people learn to have fun with their minds, of fostering
interests and passions. Discipline, hard work, and respect for
one's chosen subject matter are a necessary part of this picture;
so are certain bodies of generally-known facts and basic skills.
But it is the shaping of a person's internal narrative is
paramount, and that in my view is the real goal of education;
Hirsch's intellectual capital is a necessary but far from
sufficient part of that process. Teach the child, not the
subject.